Tecolutla is a quiet Gulf beach town at a river mouth, and the thing that makes it worth the detour is the turtles.
The Campamento Tortuguero Vida Milenaria, on the beach at the edge of town, has been protecting Kemp's ridley and green turtle nests here since 1974 — the camp is the work of Fernando Manzano, known locally as Papá Tortuga, and it releases tens of thousands of hatchlings a year. Nesting runs roughly April to August and releases happen from around June into the autumn, at dusk, on the beach. The camp has no working website; you turn up or ask in town.
Boats go upriver into the mangroves from the embarcadero — the usual circuit takes about an hour and covers the estuary and the so-called pirate cave — and out to the sandbar at the river mouth.
The beach itself is Gulf beach: brown sand, warm flat water, almost entirely Mexican holidaymakers, and busy at Easter and in July and August. El Tajín, the Totonac city with the Pyramid of the Niches, is an hour inland and is the other reason to be here.